PG&E boosts training after electrocutions

UTILITIES

Jaxon Van Derbeken

Updated 1:26 am, Sunday, February 24, 2013

Jessica Roesler shows photos of her boyfriend, PG&E worker Maximiliano Martinez, who was electrocuted in Benicia in 2010.
Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Jessica Roesler shows photos of her boyfriend, PG&E worker...

Mallory Christensen, widow of PG&E worker Jon Christensen, is reflected in a photo of their wedding day. The lineman died during a 2011 job without wearing proper gloves, a report says.
Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Mallory Christensen, widow of PG&E worker Jon Christensen, is...

Martinez was electrocuted in this underground vault in Benicia when two crew members left him alone for a few minutes.
Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Martinez was electrocuted in this underground vault in Benicia when...

The 26-year-old lineman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. was electrocuted instantly three years ago while working in a 3-by-5-foot, underground electrical vault in Benicia where other employees were supposed to be keeping an eye on him and the repair job he was doing.

Since the Windsor resident's death, two state investigations have blamed PG&E for not having a supervisor monitor the work, along with a host of other violations - including failing to ensure that workers knew the circuit in the vault was live.

Officials with Cal/OSHA, which investigates all workplace deaths, submitted their findings to Solano County prosecutors in June. Prosecutors, who would have to file a criminal case within the next few days to comply with the three-year statute of limitations, will not comment on their plans.

Meanwhile, PG&E has been fighting Cal/OSHA's proposed $176,000 fine, which would be the highest the state has ever levied against the utility for a workplace-safety violation.

Since Martinez's death, two more PG&E workers have been electrocuted on the job, prompting state officials to seek additional, smaller fines against the utility.

PG&E officials say the deaths have prompted them to revamp electrical workers' training, to make sure both that new employees know what they're doing and that veterans don't start cutting corners on safety procedures.

Company spokesman Joe Molica said that in light of the tragedies, the company has "greatly increased training and our focus on safety, across the board."

"The lesson has not been learned," said the 29-year-old Santa Rosa resident. "PG&E needs to be accountable for what happens to their employees."

Loved being a lineman

Martinez loved his job.

"Most people just go to work, but he enjoyed it incredibly," Roesler said.

He grew up in Rohnert Park, the son of Mexican immigrants, said Roesler, who was with him for eight years. He spent his free time surfing, skateboarding and driving off-road vehicles.

Martinez went to work at PG&E in 2005 as a lineman, a job he was born to do, Roesler said. The job requires physical fitness - he was a bodybuilder - and a love of outdoors, mixed with a willingness to handle risky situations.

"His job entailed every ounce of his being," Roesler said in a letter last year supporting a congressional proposal to honor linemen. "His body had to be in top condition to climb poles, haul material and weather the elements, while his mind had to be constantly on point - ready to react and troubleshoot at any given minute."

In an interview, Roesler said Martinez "was very methodical - he thought through each step. He knew how to follow rules, that they were put there for a reason."

Martinez was tight with the other two members of his crew, which operated out of PG&E's Calistoga yard. "The crew are like family," Roesler said. "They never let each other down."

Electricity off, then on

The week before his death, Martinez had gone into a vault on the 300 block of Panorama Drive in Benicia to work on setting up a new transformer. The electricity feeding the vault was off at the time, Roesler said he told her.

On March 17, 2010, he went back to finish the job. "I'm sure he didn't think it was live," Roesler said.

Martinez started by pushing two cables through a conduit inside the vault to the new transformer about 10 feet away. He was supposed to hook the cables to a connection, known as a bushing, at the underground transformer.

As the work continued, the other two crew members went to their trucks to gather tools and supplies, leaving Martinez alone for two to five minutes.

After they left, state investigators concluded, Martinez removed an insulated cap from the bushing connection with his bare hands, then cut the associated ground wire.

He was going to hook up the new wires to the vault when the live circuit at the bushing shorted. When his leg then came in contact with the ground wire he had cut, 12,000 volts of electricity surged through his body. He died instantly.

In a six-month probe of Martinez's death, Cal/OSHA found nine violations by PG&E of workplace safety laws, several of them serious. The probe concluded that PG&E managers hadn't conducted a legally required on-site safety briefing for Martinez's crew before the work started. Also, Martinez's supervisors failed to check to see whether the power was on in the vault and plan accordingly.

Investigators also concluded that Martinez's co-workers had violated state regulations by leaving him alone - workers performing high-risk tasks are always supposed to be under observation - and consequently had allowed him to get too close to the energized bushing. Also, none of his bosses made sure Martinez was wearing electricity-insulating gloves, Cal/OSHA found.

2 more deaths

Since Martinez was electrocuted, two more PG&E workers have died in similar accidents. One, 33-year equipment operator and lineman Gerald "Jerry" Biedinger, 57, was killed in August 2010 when his digging rig hit an electrical line in Tuolumne City. The second, lineman Jon Christensen, 30, died in June 2011 in Tracy as he separated crossed wires without wearing the proper rubber gloves, according to the Cal/OSHA report on the incident.

PG&E is appealing the $18,000 fine that Cal/OSHA is seeking in the Christensen case, while it has paid a $14,000 fine for violations related to Biedinger's death.

Mallory Christensen, Jon's widow, said she is angry that the company-issued gloves her husband was wearing had afforded him little protection.

"The gloves he used were not company-approved but provided by the company," she said. "I know my husband was not a physicist. Why were you (PG&E) providing gloves that were not approved for the electrical division?"

She was in labor on the day of the accident and gave birth the next day to the couple's second child, their son John. Since then, she's received survivor's death benefits but has also filed a workers' compensation suit against PG&E in hopes of gaining more assistance. She lost the couple's home in Oakdale (Stanislaus County), had to give back their financed car, and moved in with her parents in Redwood City.

She said she and her sister are setting up a nonprofit to help compensate the families of union electrical workers who have died on the job.

"Financially, it's so overwhelming," she said. "This is just a way to help people not only financially, but emotionally, to say, 'We have been there. We know what it's like.' "

Blame could be spread

PG&E declined to comment on the specifics of Martinez's or Christensen's deaths while its appeals of the Cal/OSHA fines are pending. In appealing the $176,000 fine for Martinez's death, however, the company argued that the lineman may not have followed PG&E policies, Cal/OSHA records show. The documents do not get into specifics.

The Martinez family's attorney, Vincent Scotto, who also represents Christensen's relatives, says blame for the accidents extends beyond the workers.

"The supervisors have a very high duty to do the right things," Scotto said. "If you look at the regulations, they are very specific. That's because you don't get a second chance with electricity. If you mess it up, you are dead."

PG&E's appeal has gained support from an unlikely ally - the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, the union that represented Martinez.

'A momentary mistake'

Tom Dalzell, Local 1245's business manager, disputed the state findings that Martinez and his crew hadn't been briefed about the safety hazards of their job.

"The guys talked about the job. The crew was well aware that it (the vault transformer circuit) was live," he said. "It was a momentary mistake. But the type of work that Max did does not forgive a momentary mistake."

Dalzell acknowledged that there "probably should have been" a monitor to make sure the work was done safely. The foreman of the crew was at the Calistoga yard at the time, which Dalzell said is not unusual.

"There is an awful lot of blame to be shared on Max's death," he said.

John Parks, PG&E's senior director of electric maintenance and construction, said the utility has expanded its apprenticeship requirements in the wake of the three deaths. New linemen now must undergo 40 weeks of instruction over five years of field training, he said, up from seven weeks over 3 1/2 years of training before the deaths.

"We're seeing high-quality work due to the rigor placed on training," Parks said.

As for its 1,800 existing linemen, PG&E has begun requiring one to two weeks of refresher training, double the previous requirement, Parks said. Linemen also are periodically skills-tested - made to perform tasks in a training center while being monitored by instructors - and ordered to undergo additional training if they don't measure up.

Union backs training

Although he disputed some of the state findings in the probe into Martinez's death, the union's Dalzell endorsed PG&E's beefed-up training.

"Every time something bad happens - whether it is a near miss or hit, an injury or fatality - there is something to be learned from it," he said. "You can't engineer out every mistake. All you can do is try to build in constant vigilance."

Dalzell added, "PG&E has had a bad run of these. If we thought that it was because of something they were doing or not doing, we would be lot louder about it."

Roesler, however, is skeptical.

"If it just occurs randomly, how come PG&E is having so many people die within in a short span of years?" she said. "That defies logic."